The Witch of the Wood Read Online Free PDF Page A

part of the skin, raised up in high irritation. As for the rest of him, his extremities were fine, now soothed and supple in the hot soapy bathwater.
    He took a long pull from the bottle and then raised his forearm, coughing hard into it.
    His situation was anything but “supple” or sublime. In terms of the scale of justice he’d made in his head, plates on each side, a Greek goddess in the middle, he’d long forced himself to decide it was a stone draw, rape or no rape; there was simply too much evidence on either side to go one way or the other. And while the tears formed in the curves of her nostrils and running over her lips really tipped the balance toward the dark side, the intellectual in him calmly and rationally focused on the linking of arms, the kiss in the car, and especially that small gesture of going up on the toes at the banister, as if presenting herself in willing sacrifice. Oh, rationalization wasn’t difficult at all when you did deconstructive analysis against the contrary viewpoint. Theories, even those built on shifty platforms, could come off like fact; it was an old game, one Rudy had perfected through years of teaching students to dismantle oppositions and work around their own annoying logical fallacies.
    It was the gritty realistic side of him that kept him drinking, the paranoid realist that made him consider what he would actually say or do if there was, in fact, an accusation. He was no legal expert, but didn’t they do rape kits as on Law and Order, going into her vaginal canal looking for abrasions, the rest of her body for contusions? He’d fucked her hard enough to make ripples travel up through her buttocks like whitecaps in a hurricane, thrusting and pitching his hips violently enough to bruise her palms on the banister, gripping her up and holding her in place with enough squeeze and press to leave marks. It wouldn’t look like sensitive lovemaking, that was for sure.
    Suddenly, Rudy stopped drinking mid-draught, the backlash burning his nose, his eyes watering up.
    Oh God. Oh shit.
    He took the bottle from his lips and almost dropped it in the water, his jaw slack, face ashen and pale.
    He’d suddenly figured out the riddle of the child and how April could have left a two-year-old toddler alone in the house. Of course, the boy hadn’t been alone. There must have been, in fact, a babysitter upstairs all along, probably some fifteen-year-old girl who wore braces and horn-rimmed glasses, sitting in the soft lamplight by the sleeping child, twisting a lock of hair behind her ear, doing her math homework.
    And she’d seen it all, most likely from the shadows at the top of the stairs, scarred now for life. Oh, Rudy was going to jail, certainly. If there was a husband up there, he would have stopped it. No, it was a teenage girl, watching in mute horror, a bona fide witness. The two of them were talking about it right now, comforting each other, gathering the strength to dial 911 if they hadn’t already.
    At any time now there would be a hard knock on the door, men in the hallway asking for entry, a badge and a few in plainclothes, all with short, slicked-back hair, square jaws, and stony eyes, asking their questions, curling their noses ever so slightly as if the room smelled like garbage, not wanting to touch him except with their fists and the bone-hard points of their boots and dress shoes.
    There would be a scandal. He didn’t know if this actually warranted a “perp walk” with flashbulbs popping and reporters sticking microphones in his face, but it would make the papers for sure. “Professor Rapes Office Assistant.” His mother would be mortified, his ex disgraced. He’d do time, grow old in prison, never work in higher education again, come out of lock-up a broken man, helpless and homeless.
    He stumbled out of the tub, drained it, dried off gingerly, and eventually crawled under the covers, drunk and shivering, waiting for the crisp pocket to warm to his body